


Run Red Lights

by icecreamsocialist



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - After College/University, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, F/F, Genderswap, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 03:25:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4332003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icecreamsocialist/pseuds/icecreamsocialist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Zayn stares through the window at all the lush, rolling hills. And the sheep. So many sheep. She feels lost, in the best kind of way. </i>
</p><p>  <i>Maybe they can be anyone here, she thinks. Like, if there are only sheep to witness it.</i></p><p>Niall and Zayn go for a drive and learn how to be themselves, among other people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run Red Lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theamazingpeterparker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theamazingpeterparker/gifts).



> I'm so sorry this is so incredibly belated. You asked for a genderswapped road trip--I hope this fits the bill!
> 
> Massive thank yous to Val for being an actual life-saving magician, Katie for being a constant source of support, and Kendi for being so endlessly patient with me.
> 
> Two important things:  
> 1) Niall, Zayn, and the rest are all the same age in this.  
> 2) The title is from ["#Beautiful,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe1wtkkt9-E) ie one of the greatest songs ever recorded.

Zayn drops down on the lawn, upending her packet of cigarettes: one tumbles into her lap, then another, then nothing. She peers inside.

“Oh, fuck off,” Zayn tells the empty packet. She remembers, suddenly, tossing it to Louis when he made her a drink, and then maybe two more. The scattered pair of cigarettes stare up at her, lonely, accusatory. 

"You should know better," is what they would say, if that were the sort of thing cigarettes could do.

"I do know," she says, and sighs, and reunites the pair, lining them in a neat row across her thigh.

It's too early to guess whether everyone's running a sprint or a marathon tonight, Niall especially. She's been off Zayn's radar since that first tequila shot in the kitchen. By now, she's probably getting off with Amy, which means Zayn might only need one cigarette at the end of the night. She picks the other up and taps it against her mouth, deliberating.

After graduation, she'd moved back home to go rent-free while looking for a job. It was a bit of a novelty, at first, spending more than a weekend with the friends she'd left behind, but soon enough, she started to feel like she'd never left in the first place. Sometimes, she thinks they're all just pretending nothing's changed; other times, she worries they don't have to pretend at all. 

"D'you ever feel like we've been having the same party since, like, college?" Harry asked at the beginning of the summer, in the same slow, careful way she'd eventually tell them all she was moving to LA. Like she was thinking it all out loud for the first time, except Zayn suspected she'd been waiting to say it for ages--they were the only two of their group to go away for uni, and the stasis of being back home got to her far quicker than it did Zayn. "We just keep telling the same stories, snogging the same people--"

"Or not snogging them," Zayn said, so quietly she might not have done it all. Harry kept going.

"I thought growing older meant, like... _growing_ ," she said, "but every time I'm here I feel like I'm sixteen again. I love all of you, but, like, I dunno. Maybe we just know each other too well. Like, maybe we all made our minds up about each other so long ago that we're just, like... never gonna see anything else. You know?"

Zayn did know. But she didn't want to think about what reverting back to her sixteen-year-old self meant, so she said, "Aw, babe, you'll always be a geek to me. Even if you swap out the _Lord of the Rings_ poster for, like, a few tattoos."

Harry had laughed, and then Zayn made them go round back to watch Louis talk Liam into doing something stupid, and they'd thrown back shots until Zayn could stop thinking about it, or Niall, or anything, and then done it all again the following Thursday, and the weekend after that, when Harry announced she had a job offer halfway across the planet. 

Zayn wonders if she's finally getting to be the someone else she's always wanted to be, there. From Facebook, Instagram, Zayn can't see it happening, but maybe that just proves Harry's point.

Sighing, Zayn sprawls back, lights the cigarette, and takes a long few drags. The smoke fades into the night sky like it never happened in the first place. While she was away, it was easy to forgot about this part: hanging round parties she wanted to leave, just in case Niall wanted to go, too. Yet here she is, right back at her old habits. Zayn takes a sip of the beer she's brought with her, getting quite a bit of it in her ear, then flicks her cigarette butt into the street. 

"I’m gutted--literally _gutted_ \--that me mobile’s dead right now."

Zayn startles. She wipes at her sticky chin, then tips her head back to find an open-mouthed grin, white and gleaming under the streetlamps, followed by a stripey t-shirt dress, then a bare pair of legs. She snaps quickly back to the teeth. Teeth are safe, platonic.

“I'd've made it my lock screen forever,” Niall's saying dreamily.

“Shh," Zayn tells her. She closes her eyes, then opens the left one so she can watch Niall’s grin go wider. “I’m having a lie down.”

Niall comes over and throws herself onto the grass, limbs splayed. Their elbows knock, then their knees. Zayn counts to three before crossing her arms over her chest.

“If anyone finds you napping at a party, you know they're gonna go find Tommo, and you know you’re gonna wake up with a mustache again, right?”

"Anyone?" Zayn says. "I don't know about that. You wouldn't, like."

Niall taps her finger on Zayn's wrist. "Might do," she says.

Zayn rolls to her side and props her head on a fist, unimpressed. Niall tries to keep her face blank, but Zayn knows: it's all empty threats. She’s too good at revenge.

"Might not," Niall admits, rubbing at her mouth like she can pick off the smile before it's even bloomed. Something fizzes through Zayn's lungs, light and buoyant.

"What’re you doing out here?”

“Looking for you,” Niall says, shrugging easily, peeling a blade of grass from Zayn’s pinky. “Where else would I be?”

Zayn anchors herself with two fistfuls of grass. “Thought you might be trying to, like, rekindle your romance with Greenie.”

“Rekindle? _Romance?_ ” Niall's laugh echoes down the street. “Jesus. Romance, she says. When was that, even--Year 12?”

Year 13, Zayn thinks. And the first summer after uni. And Louis's last birthday, sort of. Mistletoe counts, especially when you're just pulling up a photo of it on your mobile at opportune moments.

“Eh, dunno,” Niall says. “Maybe, like, a few months ago, but now I'm kinda just… ”

Zayn raises an eyebrow, waiting. Niall chews the blue varnish off her pinky finger. 

”Nah,” she finishes, about as haltingly as possible with one pseudo-word. Zayn squints over at her--at the tangles in her hair, the heat in her cheeks, the lippy smeared down her chin. 

“You sure about that?” she says, even though she doesn't want the answer. 

Happily, Niall doesn't give one. She pokes Zayn in the arm, then goes for her drink. “But wait, what're _you_ doing out here? You've been ages."

"Chilling," says Zayn, at the same time Niall does, same inflection, same goofy accent. They grin at each other. Zayn looks away first.

“Not interested in tearing it up tonight, then?” Niall says.

“Unchartera--Uncharata--” Zayn clears her throat. Niall looks a bit delighted. “Uncharacteristically,” she says, very carefully, “no.”

“Me neither." Niall lies back, then, leg still pressed to Zayn's. She's so warm, even through Zayn's jeans. "This is nice," she murmurs.

"Mhmm."

“Might have a bit of grass up me arse, though."

"Mhmm."

After a bit of suspicious rustling, Niall says, "By the way, like, if there's something you've been wanting to talk about, you know I’m listening, right?”

Zayn doesn't answer right away; she just stares up at the inky sky, thinking. It's all very peaceful: leaves rustling with a warmish breeze, Liam's voice drifting through the open windows, Louis yelling at him to shut up. Zayn breathes deep. Everything smells green, fresh. She could live in this moment. Nothing before it, nothing after it. Nothing to compare it to. 

“Do you ever think it’s fucked,” Zayn says, eventually, once she's corralled her drunken thoughts enough that she won't give anything away, “that we're still doing all the same shit we've been doing since we were kids?”

Niall’s response comes cautiously. “How do you mean?”

“Before Harry left, she said--um. Did you talk to Harry? Like, about why she left.”

“Oh,” Niall says. "Yeah."

Zayn gets herself up clumsily, pulling her legs in so she can sit cross-legged. Niall’s got her eyes closed beneath her, one palm resting flat on her forehead, hair exploding round her head like a firework. The column of her throat gleams in the dark, contracting when she swallows.

Zayn looks down the street.

“So what, then," Niall prompts. "You want to move someplace else? Like Haz?”

“No, I don’t think--it’s not about that. Like, not for me." Where would she go, anyway? Nearly everyone she loves is right here. “I just don’t want to go back to the person I was before I went away. I want to be, like. I don't know. Somebody else. You know what I mean?”

“Not really,” Niall says. "You were perfect then and you're perfect now. Who the hell else would you be?”

Zayn's heart takes a strange, painful little stumble. She wonders what Niall sees when she looks at her. 

"I don't know," she says. "That's the problem."

"Then yo, I'll solve it."

"Niall," says Zayn, already grinning. "No."

"Check out the hook well my DJ revolves it." She makes a noise that sounds nothing like what she means it to, hands scratching at an invisible turntable. 

"You look like a cat," Zayn tells her. "A cat that's, like, trying to get comfortable."

Niall does it again, purring this time, and Zayn laughs into her hands. Niall's both the worst and best person for this conversation, all at once. She's everything Zayn wants to be--brave, open, content with what she's got and unconcerned with what people think of that. But she's also the reason Zayn can't be those things. Not here. Not around her.

Her laugh sours, all sigh, so she forages in the grass by her knees until she comes up with the last cigarette.

"Ooh. Got one for me?" Niall props herself up on her elbows. "Or, wait, is that your last? Never mind, I'm good."

Zayn hesitates, then hands it over. "Here," she says. "I just had one. And sorry, I'm a shit drunk. Just, like, forget I said any of this."

"No, don't apologise," Niall says. "I feel like that too, sometimes."

Zayn turns to her in surprise. She's staring down at her knees, unlit cigarette hanging from between her lips. The streetlamp overhead changes her, turns her eyes into caves, creates angles on her face that aren't usually there. She looks fragile. Unfamiliar.  

"You do?" Zayn says.

Niall shrugs. "Wouldn't mind changing a few things."

"Like what?" 

"Well," Niall says, then taps a quick, gentle beat out on her knee, thumb and pointer finger spanning the length of her scar.

"Oh," Zayn says, aching with it. "Right."

"I suppose I wouldn't mind moving out of me da's place, at some point," Niall says haltingly. "But I'd hate leaving him alone. And he's about as good a roommate as I'll ever find."

She's quiet for a moment. Zayn watches her without counting out the seconds, until she's caught when Niall glances up through her eyelashes, sticky with mascara. Zayn's stuck, too--she can't look away.

"And maybe," Niall says, then takes a deep breath. "Maybe if you and me..."

Zayn swallows, too loud, too obvious in the quiet. "You and me what?"

But then Niall tilts her head, or Zayn blinks, or it was only ever a shadow in the first place, and just like that, she's Niall again: the only one Zayn's ever known. 

"You and me leave, right now," she says, corner of her mouth lifting, "and get steak pies instead of kebabs for fucking once in our lives.”

Zayn laughs; it tastes a lot like disappointment, but a little like relief, too.

 

 

**+**

 

 

When Zayn wakes, it's to fuzzy teeth, a pulsing head, and a chip balanced across the bridge of her nose.

"What the fuck," she slurs, crosseyed, nearly falling off Niall's sofa. The chip rolls off her face and disappears into the gap in the cushions.

"Balls," Niall says from down near her feet. She peers into the greasy bag in her hand, leftover from last night. "That was the last one."

"Come and get it, and then give it to me," Zayn says. "I'm gonna put it up your nose."

Niall's laugh is more of a creak, like how her bedroom door sounds when she closes it with Zayn on the outside. Zayn pulls the pillow out from under her head so she can throw it at her.

"Ah, no, danger," Niall groans. "Kinda hungover, here."

"Then why are we awake?"

"Eh, well," says Niall. "Can't stop thinking about last night, to be honest."

Zayn sits up so fast she nearly pukes. "What?"

Niall stares at her, startled first, then amused. "What what? Harry. Your problem. Steak pies?" Niall laughs again, and then has to hold her head in her hands. "Ouch. Ring any bells? I know you're a lightweight, but there's no way you blacked out."

Relief has Zayn melting back into the sofa, boneless. "Right," she breathes. "Steak pies. Gotcha."

"Good. 'Cause, like, listen," Niall says. Zayn tries very hard not to, now that she knows the world's not ending. "I know how buzzed you were about breakfast with Bobby, but he must've had a date last night, because he's not in--"

"Or is he," Zayn says, mouth shoved against the sofa cushion. "Oo-er."

Niall makes a retching noise. " _Anyway_ , I'm thinking what we should do is go get some--"

"Oo-er."

"--breakfast. Go get some _breakfast_ , you animal." Niall tosses the pillow on Zayn's face. Zayn decides to keep it there.

"Uh huh," she yawns. 

"Maybe stop at a few shops?" Niall circles her ankle with warm fingers. Zayn blinks once, then again, then forgets to open her eyes, after. "Find a bit of country road?" 

"Mhmm."

"And then maybe," Niall gently strokes over Zayn's ankle bone with her thumb, "maybe you could take that sadly neglected license of yours for a spin."

Zayn sighs, snuggling into the sofa.

"Sick. I was hoping you'd say that," someone says. Niall, maybe, but from very, very far away.

Later, much more awake and, consequently, much more hungover, Zayn stands in front of Niall's ancient Renault, squinting at the morning, and decides: friends are shit.

"Ready?" Niall sticks her head out the window. She pushes her sunnies into her hair and shakes the car keys at Zayn, grinning maniacally. "You wanna take the first shift?"

"No. I'm going back to bed," Zayn says. "I don't drive."

"Funny, that," Niall says, "but you sound just like this girl I knew back in college. Name was... Zara? No. Zora?"

"Niall."

"No, no, that's not it," Niall says. "I think it was Zayn. Yeah, Zayn. She tried to pretend like she was _such_ a bad bitch--like, erm, Selena Whatsername--"

"Kyle," Zayn says automatically. She is a bad bitch.

"Right, yeah, thought she was Selena Kyle, this girl did, but she always refused to drive. Because she was actually just this, like, super massive wimp." Niall smiles innocently. "Have you heard of her?"

Friends are _shit_. Either they kickstart your existential crisis and leave the country, or they learn how to play you effortlessly, like the strings on their second-hand Gibson.

Zayn catches the keys Niall throws her. "No," she says, taking a step towards the car.

Even worse: you let them.

 

 

**+**

 

 

They stop off at the McDonald's Louis's sister works at, in the hopes she'll throw in a few extra hash browns, and then get on the nearest motorway. Niall drives steadily through two bacon rolls while Zayn sets up the AUX cable, trying very carefully not to watch Niall lick grease off her fingers. Not because it's erotic--it really, really isn't--but because Zayn's stomach is still a bit wobbly. She takes tiny, cautious bites of her egg McMuffin. Thankfully, Niall drives like a pensioner, so her chances of keeping it all down are pretty good.

She watches the houses get farther apart, the land between them hillier, and presses her forehead to the window, mumbling along with Bruno Mars and, occasionally, Niall. It's one of Zayn's favourite things about her, especially before noon: how she always seems to know when to take Zayn out of her head and when to let her stay there. 

About an hour out, Niall pulls into a filling station. "Could use the loo," she says. "And we might as well get provisions, while we're at it."

"Alright." Zayn stretches her arms above her head, yawning. "I do need some smokes."

Inside the shop, they veer off in different directions: Niall to the toilets, Zayn to the crisps. She's in desperate need of more grease. She picks up a bag of Wotsits, swings by the cooler for a Diet Coke and water bottle, then falters, doubles back for a few cans of Pringles. On the way to the till, she passes a sad little fruit display, poorly stocked and forgotten, like no one was quite sure what to do with it. Out of obligation, she grabs the last browning banana. They won't eat it, but it makes the assortment of junk food in her arms look a bit less irresponsible.

The shop's small enough that she hears Niall before she sees her, chatting at the till with the clerk. She's put red lippy on and her hair in a messy, crooked bun; it wobbles when the bloke gets her laughing. Zayn pays close attention to how he smiles at that, the way he puts his long hair behind his ear only to pull it back out again.

It's the sort of thing she used to do obsessively, back when she first untangled the fairy lights behind her lungs and found that Niall got them glowing. She didn't know how to act around Niall, then. Not if she wanted to guard her secret--and it was too raw, too delicate to leave unprotected. So she avoided Niall in the halls at school at first, rejected all her invitations to lie on her bedroom floor and work out duets for whatever came on the radio, and would only see her in groups, when she could fit the others between them on the sofa and copy the ways they touched her, memorise what their faces did and then rehearse it all later, alone, in the bathroom mirror.

Niall tells her students they've got to practise for ten thousand hours before they can master the guitar. Zayn's logged far more time than that, over the past six years, learning how to act like she loves Niall no more than she should. 

When she walks up to the till and drops off her haul, the clerk gives her a brief glance, then goes right back to Niall. Zayn almost laughs. He's so painfully obvious; staring's got a four-second limit, _max_ , if you're trying to maintain any sort of chill. 

"Find anything good, babe?" Zayn says. She gives herself two seconds to tuck her chin over Niall's shoulder--see, she thinks, this is how it's done--and surveys the counter: a few boxes of Maltesers, wine gums, what must've been the second to last browning banana. The clerk throws a packet of Marlboros down in front of them.

"There you go, Lilly," he says. "The whole food pyramid covered." _  
_

Zayn looks at Niall, confused. Niall laughs back at her. "Veronica," she says, with--a French accent? "There you are!"

Zayn checks behind her. Then to her left. Her right. There's no one else in the shop. "Veronica? Are you--"

"Telling Julian about our rendezvous?" Niall puts an elbow on the counter, propping her chin up with a fist. "I was just about to. How I've come over from the, er, City of Lights to--no, perhaps you should say."

"But you tell it so well," Zayn says flatly.

Niall sighs, patting Zayn on the cheek before looking back over at Julian. "She's a bit shy, you know," Niall whispers conspiratorially, "but up on stage, she is a--qu'est-ce que cést?-- _vision_."

"On stage?" says Julian, looking Zayn over with a bit more interest this time. 

"Oui. I have come to watch her win the, um. The Bradford..." Niall clears her throat. "The Bradford... breakdancing... match."

Zayn gapes at her.

"No shit, really?" Julian gives a low whistle. "Could I get a preview, maybe? Didn't even know that was happening this weekend."

"Go on," Niall--or _Lilly_ , apparently--tells Zayn. "C'est la vie, no?" Bloody N-Dubz starts in, faint over the speakers, and they both turn to Zayn.

For one breathless, mad second, Zayn imagines it: busting out some ridiculous move, Niall pissing herself laughing, the both of them scrambling out the door without a backwards glance, without any of the things they were going to buy, just for a laugh. Just to feel like they've gotten away with something together. 

Niall stares at her expectantly, chewing at her thumbnail.

Zayn looks away.

"Can't risk an injury," she says, chest tight. She puts a tenner on the counter and moves toward the door. "I'll be in the car."

 

 

**+**

 

 

"Don't be mad," Niall begs, climbing into the Renault, tossing a plastic bag down by Zayn's feet. "Please."

"What the hell was that?" Zayn says.

"I thought you wanted to be different." Niall turns warily to face Zayn, arm braced against the steering wheel, ring finger stuck in her mouth. "You said you didn't always want to be the same person."

"So you turned me into a  _breakdancer_? I can't do regular dancing."

"First off, that's a lie. You're world class. And second, it was just a bit of fun. Or it would've been," she winces, turning round to take the steering wheel in hand, "if you'd've just played along."

"You can't just spring something like that on me," Zayn says. "Like, did you honestly think I'd just walk over and go yeah, sure, alright, and what, throw down a bit of cardboard? Spin round on my head?"

"Well, no. Obviously," Niall says. "But it would've been fucking sick if you had."

"Maybe you should go do it, then," Zayn says. She lays her head on the window, a bit harder than she means to, as Niall pulls onto the road. "We can turn round and tell your new mate Julian that you're entering the bloody Bradford breakdancing match."

Niall snorts. She puts her hand on Zayn's wrist, but Zayn pulls it away.

"Alright, shit. I'm sorry," Niall says. 

"That was beyond, like, Louis, even, trying to embarrass me like that."

"I wasn't trying to-- _fuck_." Niall lets out a breath. "That wasn't the goal. I just thought it'd be fun. Or, like, I didn't even really think about it. I dunno. I was just messing about."

"Don't do it again," Zayn tells her. She can't decide if she means it. 

They drive in silence for a bit, Zayn staring resolutely out the window, too angry to fish her mobile from her pocket and put on some music.

"I really am sorry," Niall says quietly, just when Zayn's starting to wonder whether a commando roll out of the moving car would be a good idea. "If you want to go back home, I understand. I can turn around."

Zayn sighs, then drags her finger through the resulting condensation on the window. "No, that's alright."

"Are you sure?"

Zayn rolls her head over on the headrest so she can look at Niall. She's pulling the skin off the end of one of her fingers, staring down the empty motorway. Zayn's gut aches.

She can't understand why she does these things--hold herself back, or try to pretend like parts of herself don't exist. It's an automatic reaction, this spineless sort of self-sabotage, and every time she's left alone in her room after, thinking it over, she can't understand why. She knows exactly how to be more like the person she is in her head; she just always keeps herself from trying to do it.

"I don't want to go home," she says, and then, before she can stop herself, "and it's not you I'm mad at."

Niall accepts this graciously, without a word, eyes darting over to Zayn before going back to the road.

"I mean," Zayn says. " _Mostly_."

Niall looks at her again, longer this time. Her mouth's hidden in her shoulder, but Zayn can see the start of a smile. "I really am sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you."

Zayn shrugs. "It's alright," she says awkwardly, then opens the bag of Wotsits, digs her mobile out of her pocket. "What do you wanna listen to?"

Niall tells her to pick anything, so she queues up the _Moulin Rouge_ soundtrack, because it's their favourite thing to sing together--an apology of her own. She doesn't even make a fuss about having to do Satine's parts. 

Later, bare feet on the dash, windows cranked down, stomach full of junk food, Zayn drifts off to Niall doing "Your Song" again, quietly, sweetly. On the backs of her eyelids, she's the sort of person who'll do anything to make Niall laugh, and Niall's the sort of person who wants to kiss her for it.

Next time, she promises, hazy and half asleep. She's got to start trying.

 

 

**+**

 

 

“How the fuck did you get a license?" 

"I mean, I know what I'm supposed to do," Zayn says. "I just don't... know... what I'm supposed to do. Like."

Niall rubs a hand down her face.

"Alright," she says. "Alright, no problem. I'll just talk you through it." She takes a long, steadying breath, then starts rattling it all off: "First thing you’ll want to do is adjust the mirrors and your seat, if you need to--the little lever’s down by your ankle somewhere, you’ll have to wiggle it a few times because it sticks a bit--oh, and check the petrol gauge, would you? I can’t remember the last time I put any in. And you might need the windscreen wipers, it looks like it's starting to go overcast. They’re--”

“Niall,” Zayn says, trying to breathe. This is why she never drives. You’ve got to know a million things at once, and you've got to know when and how to just  _do_ them all. Plus, you can’t even get high to deal with the resulting stress. “That’s not _a_ thing. That’s, like--that’s _things_. Loads of them. Which goes first?”

Niall pauses. “Fasten your seatbelt,” she says, doing her own up with gusto. “Please.”

Earlier, when Zayn woke up, she found that Niall had not only stolen the AUX cable to put on Fleetwood Mac, she'd also driven them firmly to the middle of nowhere. Zayn watched blearily through the window as they pulled off the motorway, staring out at lush, rolling hills. And sheep. So many sheep. She'd felt lost, in the best sort of way.

Maybe she could be anyone here, she thought. Like, if there were only sheep to witness it.

Predictably, Niall navigated them to another McDonald's, in a tiny village with only an intersection for a downtown. She insisted they take a photo before they went in: the McDonald's on one side, a hundreds-year-old church on the other, and Zayn in the middle, arms stretched to touch them both, wearing Niall's sunglasses and her threadbare Westlife top.

"Sick," Niall said, grinning, staring down at it until Zayn slung an arm round her neck and pulled her to the doors. She'd really needed to pee.

Inside, Zayn came out of the toilets to find Niall propped against the counter, humming along to the Gary Barlow song on. Zayn watched her talk with the clerk again, like she had at the filling station, but this time, her eyes didn't leave Niall. Niall could be anyone from behind, she realised--even as she sought out the bald spot behind her ear, the uneven slope of her shoulders. Zayn wondered what she'd think of those things if she didn't already know them like they belonged to her. If Niall were just a cute blonde in a restaurant, and Zayn didn't know she'd shaved that patch of hair up her neck because a boy said she wouldn't, or that she always tips her weight to her right leg because she's petrified of fucking up her knee again.

If Zayn didn't know those things, and Niall didn't know her, what would Zayn let herself do?

"Oi, Lilly," Zayn had called, going over to her. "Wait up." 

Niall turned to her, eyes big.

"Her drink's on me," Zayn told the clerk, handing over her card.

It wasn't much, but the smile Niall gave her, the way she'd bumped shoulders with her all the way back to the car, made Zayn feel lighter than she had since Harry left. Like something heavy had been sitting on her lungs all this time, and she'd just shoved some of it away. So when Niall took them to an endless, empty stretch of sideroad instead of the motorway and pulled over, asking Zayn if she was ready, Zayn didn't think too hard about it. She said yes. 

And now she's sat behind a steering wheel for the first time since she ran over her auntie's post box--no, Liam's shoe--or was it Louis's longboard, two days after he bought it? She fastens her seatbelt, fingers so clumsy she misses the button on the first try. 

“Brilliant," Niall says anyway. "Now check your mirrors.”

Zayn looks in the rearview mirror. It's stupid, probably, but she's a bit surprised to see herself, looking no different than she ever has. She's still Zayn, even this far away. She licks her ring finger and rubs at last night's eyeliner. 

“Christ,” says Niall. Zayn doesn't need to look over to know she's rolling her eyes. “You’re not meant to look at _yourself_.”

Zayn smoothes her right eyebrow down. “Oh, yeah. I knew that.”

“Can you just make sure you can, like, see if there's a car behind you?”

Zayn does; there isn’t. Only sheep live here, and they can't drive. “All clear. Now what?”

"Sip?"

Zayn looks over to find Niall offering up her milkshake. She leans in and takes a pull, long enough that the cold settles in at the back of her skull. Niall grins.

"Alright," she says. “You’re ready. Take my key--"

"And stick it in the ignition," they finish together, singing.

Zayn takes a deep breath. She starts the car, puts it in gear, and pulls onto the road in the direction Niall points. She doesn't look in the rearview mirror again.

 

 

**+**

 

 

Well, she doesn't until she's forced to.

It's really not so bad, Zayn's decided, as Niall snores through part of _Doris_  and another rotation of _Moulin Rouge--_ Zayn gleefully singing Christian's part this time. There's power in driving, in all those million little things you've got to do: it's Zayn that gets to decide where they go, and when they stop, and how fast it all happens. She can't think of why she's been hiding her license away, pretending it doesn't exist. She's a fucking master at going in a straight line at 10 kilometres under the speed limit.

Or she is, at least, until the Renault starts to go sluggish, even with the accelerator stomped down to the floor.

"Niall?" she says, and then yells about six times as a rusty lorry comes up behind them. It veers angrily into the opposite lane, horn blaring, while the Renault only goes slower. Zayn's heart, however, zooms ahead four car lengths.

Niall startles awake. She smacks her head into the window, takes one look at Zayn's white knuckles, and starts shouting instructions: "Flashers! Get the fucking flashers on--no, Jesus Christ, the little tab on the steering wheel, yeah, there, alright, now just get him onto the shoul--"

"Yeah, I would," Zayn interrupts, voice shriller than she'd ever like to hear it, "but the fucking car won't fucking turn!"

It takes both of them to muscle the Renault over onto the left shoulder. They roll to an involuntary stop and sit paralysed for a moment, gasping for air, Niall's clammy hands pinning Zayn's to the steering wheel. Unruffled, Ewan McGregor continues to promise to love Nicole Kidman until his dying day. Zayn's slightly concerned she's met hers.

"Are we alive?" Zayn asks, breathless. Niall's got her hair in Zayn's mouth and her arse in Zayn's lap, so it's a bit hard to tell.

"Momentarily," Niall says, "Until I work out what--Oh. _Oh_."

"What?"

Niall falls back in her seat. Zayn watches as she pulls her hair out of its wilting bun, shoving it in the approximate directions it's supposed to go.

"You idiot," she says.

Privately, Zayn agrees, but she thinks they've probably come to the same conclusion for different reasons. "I didn't do anything," she says. "I was just, like, singing, doing normal driving stuff. I don't even know what happened. It just stopped going, like."

Niall closes her eyes for a few seconds, doing some of Harry's yoga breathing. This is Zayn's window: she can escape to the moors, live a simple, outdoorsy life as a shepherd. Or maybe she could run into oncoming traffic, in the event that another car comes along at some point. The bottom line is, her chances of survival are better in any place that isn't this car, if she's killed it.

"Could you do me a favour?" Niall finally says, much calmer than Zayn's expecting. "Look at the dashboard."

Zayn unbuckles her seat belt, just in case she needs to move quickly, and looks.

"What do you see?"

"Um," she says. Hieroglyphics is probably the wrong answer. "The speedometer? Other measurement thingies?"

"And the measurement thingy to your left," Niall says. "Do you know what that one's for?"

"Which one?"

"Your other left."

"Oh," Zayn says, after a moment.

Niall leans forward, cupping her ear with a hand. "Sorry, what was that?"

"For fuck's sake, it's the petrol gauge," Zayn says. "We've run out of petrol, alright?"

"So you _can_ read it, then."

"Listen, just because I've got a bit of paper saying I can drive doesn't mean I _should_ ," Zayn says. Her patience has gone about as thin as Niall's maddening vest. Zayn knew something like this would happen. She's told Niall, she's told all of them a million times: she can't be trusted with a car. Adequate warning means she's relieved of all responsibility--Zayn might not know all that much about the legal system, but she's pretty sure that's what all the tiny print on her packet of cigarettes proves. "You've seen me with one of these things, I can barely work out how to make it go backwards."

Niall's mouth twitches. "Well, having petrol's generally a good first step."

"This is your fault as much as it is mine," Zayn says, crossing her arms. "What were you doing leaving me unsupervised like that? You could've killed me."

Niall shakes her head, grinning now. "I love you, you're the cleverest person I've ever met, but you might also be the dumbest." She starts laughing so hard she has to use the dash to keep herself up.

Zayn gives her a minute, then checks, just to be sure: "So it's not broken?"

"He's fine, apart from being, you know, immobile." Niall falls back, wiping at her eyes. "You're such an idiot, Christ. This is unbelievable. I need, like, documentation."

"Shut up," Zayn says. "No you don't."

Niall digs out her mobile. Normally, Zayn would slap it out of her hand, but she figures she owes Niall for this one. Plus, she's pretty sure they haven't got service out here anyway. Niall aims the camera at her and she surrenders, pointing to the petrol gauge with an exaggerated frown.

"You'll be grateful for this one day," Niall promises, grinning at her mobile screen. Zayn struggles to control herself, but ultimately does not toss Niall's phone out the window.

"I don't know if I was more scared when I thought we were gonna get flattened," Zayn muses, as Niall tucks it away, "or when I thought I broke your car."

"The second would've been more gruesome for you, to be honest," Niall says. "Listen, I'm gonna go outside, yeah? I've gotta stretch me legs."

"Yeah," Zayn says, "alright," but she hangs back. She thunks her head against the window and keeps it there, watching Niall go round to the front of the car and start up the stretches Harry's always insisting they do: down for her toes, up for the sky. The wind whips her hair into a tornado. She'll regret that, Zayn thinks, whenever she actually tries to brush it, and swear she's going to chop it all off. Zayn will have to undo all the knots for her. She searches for the elastic Niall tossed down in the cupholder. 

When she looks through the windscreen again, Niall's folded back over, rolling her joggers into shorts. It looks ridiculous, and her saggy arse looks even worse, but Zayn can't focus on anything but the sliver of skin between her waistband and vest. It's the slimmest gap, the width of a few fingers. 

This is where she'd usually go off for a smoke. Or start listing Boyz II Men songs in alphabetical order. Or try to push Niall over, because that's what Louis would do. This time, though--

This time she lets herself imagine it. She's Veronica, fearless breakdancer, and when she gets out of the car, Lilly doesn't straighten, doesn't turn. She just watches from over her shoulder, hair beckoning like spindly, shivering fingers, and Zay-- _Veronica_ lets them pull her closer. She fits her middle finger to Lilly's skin, tracing from the hollow on one side of her spine to the other, and when she tucks her thumb into the hot, dark space beneath her joggers, she grins.

 _Niall_ grins.

Niall _is_ grinning, hands propped against the bonnet, muffled voice yelling for Zayn to come out. 

Zayn scrubs at her face. She climbs out of the car and takes a long, steadying breath.

It's cooler than it was when they left, with the sun melting down and the wind rushing in from every direction. Aside from the road, there's just empty space wherever she looks: bruised, low-hanging clouds and uninterrupted fields. They've run out of sheep, even. It makes her feel small, like she can't find herself, so she looks back at Niall. Nowhere's big or empty enough to fit everything Niall makes her feel.

And when she looks over, Niall's already looking back, face oddly serious--until she launches into a star jump, grinning wildly. Zayn remembers the coy smile she'd imagined, back in the car, and laughs.

"What's wrong with you," Zayn says. "Quit it."

Niall starts counting, maintaining intense eye contact while she bounces and flails.

"You're making me seasick," Zayn tells her. "Come on, we've been sitting all day." She hops up on the bonnet and pats the space beside her. "We need to sit."

Niall puffs out a laugh, stumbling over. "I don't think that's how it works. You bunked off PE too much in college."

"You just didn't bunk off enough." Zayn hooks her ankle round the back of Niall's calf, doing her goofy voice: "C'mon, come chill with me, Nialler. So comfy, so chill, _so_ \--"

"Jesus Christ," says Niall, mouth twitching. "Shut your trap." She clambers up onto the car, sandals dropping unceremoniously to the ground behind her. Zayn sticks out her arm so Niall can pull the elastic off her wrist.

"Your hair's a mess," she says. "Sort it so I can actually look at you."

Niall sticks out her tongue, but still gathers her hair in her hands to tie it back in a ponytail. Zayn gives herself four seconds to enjoy it, the naked slope of her neck, the strand of golden hair caught on her lip, then looks down at their knees.

"Better?" Niall says.

"Worse," Zayn answers, without looking. Knees are safe. She touches Niall there, tracing the exposed scar, pink and crooked and perfect. Niall stops kicking her feet back and forth. "How's this feeling?"

Niall's quiet until she looks up. "A bit achy, I guess."

"From the drive?"

Niall shrugs. "Yeah, probs." Her face always goes so still and blank when something's bothering her and she doesn't want to say. It's doing that now, so Zayn drops it, along with her hand. She cranes her neck to look at the empty road behind them.

"What now? Hitchhike back to civilisation?" Zayn says.

"I suspect," Niall starts, watching Zayn carefully as her accent morphs with each word, "that a couple Southern belles such as ourselves would have no problem convincing a farmer to get us some petrol." She flutters her eyelashes, grinning. "Don't you think?"

Zayn gets out her packet and lighter. "What I think," she says, "is that I need a smoke."

Niall's eyebrows reach for her hairline. "That's not a no."

"No," Zayn says. She blows smoke to her right, then grins to her left, at Niall. "It's not."

 

 

**+**

 

 

Zayn and Niall lean against the boot, waving, as Bressie's lorry rattles off.

"Thank you kindly!" Zayn shouts after her.

Niall watches her, grinning sidelong. "You really got into that."

"Me? What about you?" Zayn does a curtsy, fluttering her eyelashes like Niall kept doing. "My hero," she simpers, "however can I repay you?"

Niall shrugs, unapologetic. "She was fit, and she brought us a Curly Wurly. And, like. She was  _fit_." Niall points the spout of the empty petrol can at her. "What's your excuse, eh?"

The way you kept walking off, Zayn thinks, hand pressed to your mouth like you might give it all away. Like you couldn't believe it. Like you didn't know me, and you liked it.

Zayn clears her throat, peering off the way Bressie went. 

"Should we get her back over here? She's not gone too far, I'm sure we could still catch her."

Niall laughs, sets the petrol can on the boot, and launches herself at Zayn. "Aw, Zaynie," she says, petting at the side of Zayn's head like she's a temperamental dog. "What would I want her for when I've got you?"

Zayn decides not to try and answer that. "Get off," she mumbles halfheartedly. Thankfully, Niall doesn't pay her any attention. 

It's officially approaching dusk, now. There's a fuzzy sort of quality to the light, making everything look softened, a bit like an oil painting--something less than real, with the press of Niall's chest to hers, the slide of Niall's fingers through her hair. Zayn closes her eyes and sets her hands carefully to Niall's back. Four seconds. That's how long people with nothing to hide hug for. She gets one last squeeze off her, then Niall goes over to put the petrol can in the boot.

"Well," says Zayn. "What's next?"

Niall slams the boot closed and presses both palms flat to the car, thinking.

"I've got lessons to give on Monday," she says. "I suppose we should head home. We'd get in about... one, maybe?"

Zayn thinks about going home to her parents. Her baba might still be up. He'll microwave a plate of leftovers and stay up to watch her eat them, eyes drifting closed at the kitchen table until Zayn shakes him and goes off to the same single bed she's been cramming herself into since coming back from uni.

"Could do," Zayn lies. 

"Or," Niall says. Her eyes are hopeful, bright, even in the dimming light. Zayn's heart speeds up. "Or we could keep going."

Zayn makes her wait a minute, just for the suspense of it.  

"As long as I don't have to drive," she says.  

 

 

**+**

 

 

"We're nearly there. I think."

From the corner of her eye, Zayn sees Niall hold her mobile to the window like she's chasing a signal. Zayn grips the steering wheel a bit tighter and squints through the windscreen. It's started raining, and the headlamps are shit--she can only see about ten metres ahead. 

"I hate you," Zayn says. She can feel Niall grinning at her, but she doesn't take her eyes off the road. She really needs a cigarette.

"Just take a left the next time you can, Malik."

A bit later, after obeying a few more commands-- _left, right, right, okay sliiiiiight left, quick right here_ \--and pulling into a carpark, Zayn stares up at the familiar red and glass storefront, blurry through the rain-spattered windscreen.

"Niall," she says. "Did you bring us to Tesco?"

"Yeah, buddy."

"I'm so glad I've had this opportunity to explore more of my country."

"Alright, alright." Niall unbuckles her seatbelt and pokes Zayn with it. "You'll be singing a different tune once we've got beer. Come on, I think it closes in," she checks her mobile, "half an hour."

"At _ten_?" Zayn says. "Where the hell are we?"

Niall's the expert, so Zayn lets her take the lead, even though the store's set up completely different to the one Bobby works at. Zayn perches on the back of the buggy while Niall presses up behind her, pushing it along, ordering Zayn to pluck various snacks with no nutritional value off the shelves as they go careening past.

"So is this where we're staying tonight?" Zayn asks, when Niall pulls away to pick out a six pack. "Is there, like, a secret travelodge here? Can Bobby get us a deal?"

"Of sorts," Niall says. "Now shhh, I'm concentrating."

Only one till's open up front, operated by a white girl with a nose ring and hair the same colour as her lips. She's cute, Zayn thinks, but she thinks it in the way she always does whenever Niall's around: distantly, theoretically, like looking in shop windows at handbags she could never actually buy.

"Cool tattoos," the girl says, after Niall's doubled back in search of mouthwash.

"Thanks. Cool hair." Zayn thinks of Julian and the filling station, a million years ago, a million miles ago, and says, feeling a bit drunk with it, "My name's Veronica. I'm a breakdancer."

"Cool," the girl says, laughing a bit. She points to her name tag. "I'm Perrie. I'm a Tesco clerk." She rings up a few things, not looking away from Zayn. "Sorry, this is a bit forward, but I know I'll regret it if I don't ask. That other girl, is she your... ?" 

Zayn blinks. "Yes," she hears herself answer.

"Damn. Well. She's a lucky girl," Perrie says, grinning ruefully. She snaps her gum, then her fingers, like it's a joke, like she's in on the game Zayn's meant to be playing. Zayn's ears ring.

"Do we want spearmint or bubblegum?"

Niall comes up next to Zayn, doing a sort of conga with two jugs of mouthwash. From what feels like very far away, Zayn watches Perrie's eyes run over Niall, appraising, before she gives Zayn a covert thumbs up. 

"So are you," she says, corner of her mouth.

Niall looks between them. "What?" 

"Any flavour's fine," Zayn says faintly.

"Hmm, well." Perrie leans in for a closer look and Niall holds both the bottles out to her, grinning pleasantly. "Suppose it would depend on how sweet you like it. Veronica, here, I bet she'd like the bubblegum." 

"Spearmint," Zayn says. "Let's get the spearmint." She takes the jug from Niall and sets it firmly on the belt, not looking at either of them. She feels like she might be sick. If Perrie keeps going like this, if Niall works out what she's done--works out  _everything_ \--

They need to get out of here. Now. 

Zayn opens her mouth, but Niall gets in first: "Oh, by the way--" She ducks in to look at Perrie's name tag, elbow on Zayn's shoulder. Zayn tries to stay very still. "Perrie! Hello! I'm Lilly. Have you heard about our trip?"

"Not quite. You two are--"

"Breakdancers," Zayn cuts in. "It's a breakdancing thing."

"Oh!" Niall sounds delighted. She throws her arm round Zayn's shoulder, yanking her closer. "She's got some moves, Veronica does. You wouldn't believe it."

"I might," Perrie says.

Zayn can't breathe, with Perrie looking at her, Niall's thumb resting on her pulse point. Niall isn't even doing the accent anymore. She just sounds like herself. Zayn fumbles her wallet from her pocket and takes out a few bills.

"Oh, shite, I left my bag in the car," Niall says. "If you've got a minute, I can--"

"Don't worry," Zayn says. "I've got it."

Of course, _of course_ , Niall smacks a kiss to her cheek. She's still got her arm wound around Zayn's neck. Zayn's face goes hot at the look on Perrie's.

"Legend," Niall says fondly. "We'll eat out tomorrow. My go this time."

Zayn thanks Perrie, before she has the chance to respond to _that_ one, and takes the change back. She doesn't even sort it out, just stuffs the bills down her back pocket and heads for the doors.

"Oh. Guess we're leaving, then. Cheers," she hears Niall say, sounding amused. Zayn shoulders the door open.

"Come and show me your moves sometime!" Perrie calls. "Both of you!"

Zayn doesn't breathe again until they're out in the carpark, Niall at her heels with a bag hanging from each hand. That might've been the dumbest, bravest, worst thing she's ever done: Niall was talking to someone who thinks she's got a girlfriend. Niall was talking to someone who thinks _Niall_ is her girlfriend. It should probably trigger an apocalypse, but somehow, the world looks just the same as it did half an hour ago. Which, Zayn thinks, watching Niall splash across the carpark and throw a grin back over her shoulder, might be an apocalypse all its own.

She takes another slow breath and tips her face back to catch the rain. The hot, queasy feeling in her stomach starts to dissolve.

"The hell you doing?" Niall shouts. "You know if you get wet, you're gonna have to sleep that way, right?"

Zayn wipes off her face. "I'm coming, I'm coming," she says, and follows after Niall. 

 

 

**+**

 

 

The Renault hidden behind a massive skip, they climb into the backseat and get their spread set up between them. Zayn thinks briefly of turning on some music, but the rain's coming down now in earnest, and it makes everything feel insular, intimate, like they're the only two people alive. For once, she's not interested in making this a threesome with Frank Ocean.  

Niall, on the other hand, seems to have different plans.

"That clerk," she says, chewing thoughtfully on a drumstick of fried chicken. "Perrie, right? She--"

"What about her?" says Zayn.

Niall grins, smear of cheese dust on her chin. "She was totally into you."

"Oh."

"And she was hot. If you _really_ want to be a different person," Niall gives a cheeky eyebrow waggle, "you could go back in and ask her what time she gets off."

Zayn takes the bag of Wotsits from Niall and crunches through a few, one at a time, while she decides what to say. "I think they're closed," is what she lands on. "She's probably gone home by now."

"But if she hadn't, you _would_?" 

It's bizarre to hear Niall say it like that--like she wouldn't, like she hasn't done something just like it before. But that was uni, she supposes. Niall doesn't know that version of her. She's made sure of it--it's always seemed it would be easier to hide how she feels when Niall doesn't even know it's a possibility. "Me?" Zayn says, evenly as she can. "Nah."

"Got me hopes up for nothing." Niall gives a mournful shake of her head, as if she'd expect nothing less from Zayn. As if she already knows everything there is to know about her. Harry was right: they made their minds up about each other ages ago. They'll never see anything else.

It's out of Zayn's mouth before she's even thought to say it: "Veronica, though..." 

"Oh," Niall says, nearly smiling, "she would've, then?"

"Hard to know," Zayn says, and Niall flat-out grins. She still thinks it's all just a joke. Zayn's heart rattles against her ribs all the same. "Veronica's a bit of a wildcard, like. Can never tell what you'll get with her."

"In that case, maybe she should come round more often."

Zayn takes a sip of beer, then another. "Maybe," she says quietly.

When she looks back over at Niall, Niall's already looking at her, chin resting on her bent knee. "Seriously, though," she says. "Are you feeling any different? Less, like, existentially claustrophobic?"

Zayn snorts. She thinks about that hour before the car ran out of petrol. "Yes," she says.

"Good!"

She thinks about pretending she'd never be interested in Perrie. "No."

"Shit," Niall says. "Well. Which one is it?"

Zayn smiles at Niall's frown. "It's a process, I guess."

" _Progress_ , you mean. Like, let's look at the evidence." Niall nudges Zayn's wrist with her bare foot. "Exhibit A: You drove a car. And you didn't even run anything over! That's unbelievable."

"I ran us out of petrol, though," Zayn says. "Someone nearly ran _us_ over."

Niall waves a hand dismissively. "Details. I'm in charge, and I say it still counts."

"Oh, are you?"

Niall ignores this. "Moving on to Exhibit B, you let me embarrass you! Like, loads of times. You'd've killed me for that in college."

"I don't know, feels like I've been putting up with that one for years."

"Zayn." Niall thunks her head back against the window. "Learn to take a bloody compliment, would you?"

"Oh, right, sorry. Thanks for finally noticing how embarrassing you are."

Niall kicks her this time, laughing, sending a thing of biscuits to the floor. She finishes off the rest of her beer, then says, "Is it enough, though? Like, for now?"

"Enough for what?" Zayn asks.

"Enough to feel better. And, you know, to keep you here." Niall clears her throat. "I mean, not _here_ , here, but nearby. Close enough to visit. Like, say, still in England."

Affection surges through Zayn, warm, electric. She tries to press it into Niall's bare ankle with her knuckles. "Probably."

"Probably?"

"Most likely."

Niall squints at her. 

"Most definitely," Zayn corrects.

"Good. 'Cause it's been, like. It's been good, having you around again. I'd miss you if you left." Niall pulls a gruesome face when Zayn clutches at her heart dramatically. "I mean, I _guess_. Probably. Whatever."

"Probably?" Zayn mimics, grinning.

"Well." Niall rests her palm on the back of Zayn's hand. "Only 'cause you're shit at texting," she says.

Before Zayn's thought of whether it's a good idea--before she's even thought to do it--she turns her hand over, slotting together their greasy, cheesy fingers. She thinks of Perrie, suddenly, and wonders what she would make of this. She wonders what _Niall_ makes of this; she's staring down at their hands, blank faced and motionless in the light from their phones. She looks angular, so much older than the girl who moved down the block at the start of college, with her crooked teeth and her secondhand guitar and her knock on the Maliks' door, even before the moving truck had pulled out of her new driveway. Niall's thumb strokes over hers, tentative, barely there, but strumming at strings that lead to the tender frets of Zayn's heart. 

If Perrie were to see them now, she reminds herself desperately, she'd see Veronica and Lilly. It's just pretend. It's just a game. 

"Thanks, Lilly," she whispers, playing along.

Niall pulls her hand free and sticks it in the plastic bag by her foot. "Avec plaisir," she says. "Want another beer?"

Zayn watches her fingers wilt, curling in on her own empty palm. "I'm alright."

"Well, that's nice, but I wasn't asking you."

Zayn looks up. Niall's grinning, eyes all hooded in shadow. It's just a game, she tells herself, again and again and again, until Veronica--fearless, breakdancing, _girlfriend-of-Lilly_ Veronica--takes the can.

 

 

 **+**  

 

 

"We should go on a real road trip sometime," comes Niall's voice, floating in from somewhere in the dark.

"Mmm."

"Just me and you and, like, a motorway. As far as it goes."

"Which me and you?" Zayn wants to say, but it feels like too much effort to open her mouth. If she stays quiet, Niall will think she's asleep, and then Zayn actually will fall asleep, with the rain pelting against the windows, Niall breathing somewhere close in the dark, no one else alive on the planet.

"You know what would be good? We could go to the States next summer. Like, fly into some random city, rent a car, drive over to Harry. Wouldn't that be sick?"

It's quiet for a long time, long enough for Zayn to imagine it: losing themselves on dusty American motorways, pulling off in towns they don't know and that don't know them, stretching across the backseat, propping their feet in opposite, open windows, with arms and legs and bellies bared in the simmering heat and Niall turning to her, as close as she's never been, grinning slow, sticky, leaning in mouth first--

"Zayn? You awake?"

Zayn jolts, shin catching something soft.

"Thanks, yeah, that was my face." A hand goes round Zayn's ankle, thumb pressing firm to the bone there. "This is a serious problem."

"What?" Zayn slurs, heart racing. "What's--What?"

"Your feet are in my face. Like, literally. I can't sleep like this," Niall says.

Zayn squints an eye open and tries to look down her body, but it's so dark she can't make out anything past her knees. She squishes her feet in closer to the back of the seat, clumsily catching the door with a toe. "Alright?" she says thickly.

Zayn listens to Niall shift around, her own heart try to settle. She can still see Niall grinning at her, bathed in golden light and a breath away, like it actually happened. She screws her eyes shut and tries to erase it. 

"Nope. Still there."

"What would you have me do?" Zayn says, opening both eyes to stare right at Niall's toes. "I've got your feet in my face, too. There's no place else to put them. Do you want me to go in the front?"

Niall's fingers are still draped over Zayn's ankle. She taps into the hollow near her heal, pointer finger then ring. "I could come over there."

"Where?"

"Next to you," Niall says. "On your side."

Zayn slaps her hand flat on the seat, groping round until she hits Niall's ankles, then the edge of the seat on the other side. It doesn't take long. "There's no room. Just close your eyes."

"I can't," she says fervently. "I cannot sleep with your toes in my face. You're gorgeous, Zayn, really, but your feet are--"

"Oh my god," Zayn snaps. "Just come over here and shut the fuck up."

Niall makes a triumphant noise, rocking the car a bit with whatever victory dance she's doing, then pulls her feet back from next to Zayn's shoulder so she can kneel. It takes a great deal of swearing and banging her head on the ceiling to cross over to Zayn's side. Zayn knows she should probably turn to face the seat--respect sleepover etiquette, go back to back--but she can't make herself move. She feels a bit like her limbs belong to someone else. Or like they're still dreaming, maybe.

"Oh," Niall says softly, when she finally stops rustling around.

"Better?"

Niall takes some time to decide. "Yeah," she finally murmurs. "Thanks."

She sounds so close, but somehow, they aren't touching at all. Zayn's eyes flutter open.

Niall isn't respecting sleepover etiquette, either.

She's facing Zayn, with her eyes closed and her arms folded tight across her body, fingers fisted in her top. Even in the dark, Zayn can see the incandescent tips of her eyelashes, the start of freckles coming in at the bridge of her nose. Her mouth is so close, Zayn thinks. She'd hardly have to move to touch it. 

"What?"

Zayn drags her eyes up to Niall's. They're open, now, bottomless. 

"What?" Niall murmurs again, voice hoarse. She tastes of spearmint, when Zayn kisses her. 

For five terrifying, endless seconds, Niall doesn't kiss back. She keeps her arms tightly crossed between them. 

"Um," she says, when Zayn pulls away and drops her head on the seat, eyes still pinched shut. "Um. I. What?"

Zayn doesn't say anything. She should laugh and push Niall off the bucket seat--that's what Louis would do. 

"Zayn?"

But want surges through her, so sudden and fierce she feels dizzy with it. Six years of pretending it isn't there--what difference would one night make?

"Should I do that again?" Zayn whispers, opening her eyes. Niall's staring at her, face perfectly blank. "Exhibit C?"

Niall swallows. "Oh," she says, and stares some more. Zayn chews at her bottom lip, heart in her throat, and Niall's gaze shifts. She nods, just barely, and finally, _finally_ , kisses Zayn back.

Zayn hardly knows what to do--a few minutes ago, she wouldn't let herself think about Niall, let alone touch her like this. It hardly seems real. Her hands are clumsy, awkward; they keep interrupting themselves, flitting from Niall's dirty, tangled hair to her sides to the droopy bum of her joggers. She pulls Niall closer until she's got nowhere to go but on top of her. 

"What are we doing?" Niall says, breathless, pulling off of Zayn's mouth. She sounds incredulous. She looks turned on. It makes the bottom of Zayn's stomach fall away. 

"Kissing." Zayn strains up for Niall's mouth again, but she leans out of reach, arms braced on either side of Zayn's head.

"But _why_? Just to do it? I mean, Zayn, like. You want this? Really?"

"Do you?" Zayn says. She slides her hands down the backs of Niall's joggers, like she'd imagined doing earlier. There'd been a windscreen between them, then. Now it's just a few layers of clothing. Zayn's fingers tremble at the divide between Niall's pants and her skin. 

Niall throws her head back and laughs--Zayn feels it as much as she hears it, with their stomachs pressed together. "What is _happening_?" She laughs again, the kind she does when Louis's crossed a line but she doesn't want him to know. "Who _are_ you?"

Zayn could say it. Six years and she could finally say it, here, now, in a no-name village, in the back of a Tesco where she let a stranger believe it. She opens her mouth--

\--and "Veronica" is what comes out.

Niall's eyes go wide. They dart from Zayn's eyes, to her mouth, to the stretched neckline of her top and back again. "Oh. So that's--" She swallows. "That's how it is? Lilly and Veronica?" 

Something cuts through the arousal in Zayn's stomach, turning it heavy, sour. 

"If you want," she whispers anyway. She closes her eyes and waits. If Niall doesn't want her, even when they're pretending to be other people, then she doesn't want to see it. She counts: one rib-cracking heartbeat, two, three, fou--

Niall presses her mouth to Zayn's throat. Her cleavage. Her stomach. She goes through it all ruthlessly, frantically, efficiently, like she's ticking through one of her checklists. Like Zayn's a closet that needs organising. Zayn tries to kiss her again, or put her hands down Niall's pants, but Niall presses her wrists to the seat. 

"No," she croaks, sounding far away. "Leave it. I've got you."

Zayn leaves it. She closes her eyes and tries to stay as still as she can, so Niall won't change her mind.

When Niall finally unbuttons Zayn's jeans and slides a hand into her pants, Zayn's so wet she can hear it. Niall's fingers are hot against her, unrelenting, slick when they skim over her clit, but ít's like there's a disconnect between it all: what her body's doing, what Niall's doing to it. How it all makes her feel. There's a Tesco bag under her elbow, and Niall's hair is caught on her nose ring, but she tries not to move, to breathe without making any noise.

"I can't--" she starts, and doesn't know how it's supposed to end.  _I can't be this version of me. I can't be anyone else. I can't come._  But she does, suddenly, Niall's tongue curled round her pulse point, her fingers curled in Zayn's cunt. Zayn tries to swallow down every noise, just in case one of them amounts to something she can't take back.

She lifts her hands off the seat and puts them over her face, thumbs slipping in the sweat at her temples, as her breathing goes back to normal. Niall takes her fingers back. She's an unfocused blur, falling back against the door, wiping her hand off on the crumpled Wotsits bag by her foot. Zayn goes hot all over. She unsticks the bare bit of back that's fused to the seat and pushes her shirt down. 

"I could, um," she says. "I could do you. If you want."

Niall's just a voice in the dark, familiar and strange all at once: "I'm alright," she murmurs.

They lie down again at opposite ends of the seat, not touching, and Niall doesn't say a word about Zayn's feet. Zayn buttons up her jeans and ignores her wet pants and stares at the ceiling, watching it go lighter and lighter, listening as the rain stops, the birds start. She wonders who Niall thinks she is, now, and doesn't let herself cry.

 

 

**+**

 

 

Zayn doesn't remember closing her eyes, but the next time she opens them, it's morning and Niall's gone. That's a new one, she thinks: waking up in someone else's car, behind a Tesco, without the someone else.

Blearily, she stares at the crumpled Wotsits bag on the floor. There's nothing to be heartbroken about. And if there is, she tells herself, it really only happened to Veronica.

"Morning."

Zayn pushes herself up on an elbow, squinting into the front seat to watch Niall climb in on the driver's side. She's looking fresh, sunnies on, hair neatly slicked back in a ponytail, grin bright. Maybe last night didn't even happen.

"Hey," says Zayn, voice still thick with sleep. 

"Breakfast, as promised," Niall says, holding up a pastry box. She pulls a muffin from it and Zayn watches her carefully peel the paper off, folding it into tinier and tinier triangles. There's a hangnail on her left thumb, Zayn realises, angry looking, bloody. She keeps picking at it with the nail of her pointer finger.

"--if you want."

Zayn shakes her head, blinking. "Sorry, what?"

"I said you should go use the toilets, if you want," Niall repeats slowly, "before we go home."

"Oh. We're going home?"

Niall shrugs. "Wouldn't say no to a bed. Or some real food. Or, like, a shower, to be perfectly honest."

"Yeah," Zayn says, face flushing for some reason. She presses her knuckles into her eyes, until Niall's outline looks like a neon sign against the backs of her eyelids. "Yeah. Alright."

Zayn collects all the bits of herself left scattered in the backseat and goes into Tesco, bra stuck down the back of her jeans, eyes glued to the linoleum floor in case Perrie's around. In the toilets, she pulls her dirty pants off, wraps them in bog roll, and stuffs them down the bin. That's all the evidence gone, she thinks, splashing water on her face. She tries to avoid the mirror but there she is, anyway, further proof nothing's changed: Zayn, same as she's ever been. 

 

 

**+**

 

 

Apart from stops each for the loo and pasties, Niall drives straight home, unrelentingly, unnervingly cheerful all the while. She commandeers the AUX cable to play the fast songs off _Red;_ the Drake playlist Zayn made her; that game where she puts on songs she thinks Zayn knows, _must_ have heard at some point, just to act comically shocked when Zayn says she's got no idea who it is. Zayn tries to act like everything's normal, too, but she feels queasy, on edge, waiting for accusations Niall doesn't make but must be thinking. 

"I'm fucking knackered," Zayn mumbles, massaging her temples. "Mind if I take a nap?"

Niall laughs and turns the stereo down. "Since when do you try to get permission for that?"

Since I woke up, Zayn thinks, and forgot who I'm supposed to be around you.

She closes her eyes, but all she can see is Niall's face from last night, after they'd kissed, when she'd pulled away and looked at Zayn like she'd never seen her before. Yesterday, it was all Zayn wanted. Today, she wants to take it all back. During an extended Chicago interlude, she gives up on sleeping and puts her head half out the window, smoking two fags in a row, watching from wind-stung eyes as yesterday's milestones count down backwards. 

Sometime after one, Niall pulls into the drive at Zayn's house. She doesn't shut the engine off. All the cars are there, and Safaa's slouched on the porch with Boris and one of Zayn's old books. It's an out-of-body experience, watching her nearly fall off the step waving to Niall. 

"Aw, Saf." Niall sticks her arm out the window so she can wave back. "Wish I could come say hi."

"You could," Zayn says. "You'd be invited for lunch, if you did."

Niall laughs. "Yeah, and then I'd pass out right on the table."

Zayn tries to think of any other time Niall's willingly passed on an opportunity for her mum's samosas, and with a sudden, sickening jolt, she sees this happening again, and again, and _again_ , until Niall's made a quiet habit out of avoiding Zayn entirely. She knows how it goes, after all: she did it to Niall all those years ago, when she was the one trying to keep an unwanted declaration from happening. It's so much worse when it's initiated by the person on the receiving end. Six years of policing her every move, of putting their friendship before her feelings, and now Zayn's gone and thrown it all away on a backseat fumble. 

"Listen," she blurts out. "About last night--"

"Zayn--"

"No, listen," Zayn says, louder. "I don't want to make it awkward or whatever. I've just got to make sure we're on the same page. That's all."

"You don't, though," Niall says. "Like, you really, really don't. We are. It's alright. I get it."

Zayn's heart beats so hard it hurts. Here's that apocalypse, finally: on a Sunday afternoon, with Safaa reading her book upside down on the front porch and Zayn sat in Niall's car like she's driving her home from college, three bloody months after graduating uni.

Gritty eyed, she looks over at Niall. Her face is like stone. "You do?"

"It was just a laugh," she says. "Right? Like the thing with Bressie. And all the breakdancing shi--"

"Yeah," Zayn agrees desperately.

"We were just, like." Niall shrugs. "Taking a break from being ourselves, I suppose."

Zayn breathes. "That's it exactly. That's a perfect way to put it."

"Yeah," Niall says. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Zayn says automatically. They turn at the same time to look out the windscreen. Safaa watches them over the top of her book. Boris chews on one of her baba's shoes. Drake does "Wednesday Night Interlude." Everything keeps going the way it always has.

"We're us again, right?" 

"Yeah," Zayn says. She puts her head on the window.

"That's too bad."

Zayn's almost doesn't want to look over--but Niall's only smiling at Safaa through the windscreen. "Niall is so hungry," she says, "but so tired."

Zayn makes herself laugh. "I'll sneak a Tupperware for you."

"Sick. You should, um. You could bring it by the shop tomorrow?"

Zayn nods. By then, they'll be back to normal. She'll be used to this new kind of disappointment cemented to her lungs, heavy and far more permanent. "I could do that."

"See you later, then?" Niall says, voice bright. 

"Of course," says Zayn. "Don't you always?"

She stuffs all the trash into a Tesco bag and says goodbye, then gets out and balances on the curb, hand shielding her eyes from the sun, while Niall chugs off down the street. Before Niall can climb out of the Renault, she turns to the house. She doesn't want to wait to see if she'll look back.

"Why did Niall leave?" Safaa asks from the porch.

Zayn goes over and gives Boris a pat on the head, then Safaa. Her hair is hot to the touch, soaked all in sun. Zayn wants to curl up next to her and rest her face there.

"She had to go," Zayn says, straightening, stepping back off the porch.

"Why?"

Zayn doesn't answer. Mindlessly, she dumps the trash in the garage bin, toes off her shoes at the door, and goes inside to the kitchen, where her mum and Waliyha are chopping peppers at the table. They both give her a look as she stands at the sink, throwing back a glass of water in one go. 

"Good night, eh?" says Waliyha. "Where's Niall gone?"

Zayn shrugs, filling up another glass from the tap.

"If she's coming back for lunch, tell her we'll be sitting down around five," her mum says.

"She's not coming," Zayn says, too sharp in the placid quiet of the kitchen. "Blimey. We don't, like--we're not always together. We're not sixteen anymore."

"Could've fooled us."

It's only a joke, but it makes Zayn want to smash her glass on the floor. She slams it in the sink instead. "I'm going to bed."

Waliyha laughs as she bangs past them and down the hall. "Thought you weren't sixteen?" she calls. 

Zayn doesn't say anything. This disappointment, it's so different from the kind she's always carried--it's mutating, growing claws, tearing through the backs of her lungs. She's got to make it to her room before it gets loose. 

She slams her bedroom door shut and goes straight to her bed, falling face down so she doesn't have to see her old posters, her old photos, her old reflection in the dresser mirror. Everything's fine, she tries to tell herself. Niall doesn't know. Niall will never know. 

Zayn rolls onto her back. She didn't let herself cry over Niall in college and she's not going to do it now. She wipes at her eyes, then goes over to sit on the windowsill, upending her packet of cigarettes: one tumbles into her lap, then another, then nothing.

"Oh my god," she says to the pair of them. "Fuck _off_."

She leans her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands and _laughs,_ painfully, hysterically. When she looks back up, eyes stinging, it's at her own reflection. Together, they take a ragged, centering breath.

Harry was right, Zayn thinks, for the millionth fucking time, but it's really all their own doing. They made up their minds about themselves ages ago, and now that's all they'll ever let anyone see. Next weekend, she'll go to Josh's or Danny's or Laura's and watch Louis talk Liam into doing something stupid and throw back shots until she can stop thinking about Niall and tell everyone about an impromptu road trip with fake names and funny accents and beers behind a Tesco skip. Nothing else. She'll tell it that way so many times it'll hardly take any work to pretend that's the way it all happened. _  
_

Zayn stares at herself in the mirror, at that way her undercut's awkwardly growing out, at Niall's ancient Westlife top, at the Batman curtains billowing out from behind her. Nothing will ever change if she keeps stopping it from happening.

She reunites the pair of cigarettes, stuffing them back in the packet.

"Where you going? Are you gonna be back for lunch?" her mum calls as she goes banging back down the hall.

"To Niall's!"

"Thought you weren't sixteen anymore."

Zayn doubles back to the kitchen and hangs in the doorway. "I'm not," she tells Waliyha firmly.

"Whatever," Waliyha says. "I literally don't care."

"Let me know if you're coming back," her mum says. "And if Niall's coming with you."

"Yes, yes, I wi--"

"Oh, hang on." Her mum springs up for the refrigerator. "I've got some veg from the garden, why don't you take some for Bobby?"

Zayn shifts from foot to foot in the doorway, watching her mum stuff cucumbers and tomatoes and eggplants into more fucking Tesco bags. She's done this a million times. She's marched into the Horans' without knocking, swapped Bobby home-grown vegetables for lambchops, sprawled out next to Niall on her bedroom floor so she could time her stares, ration her touches, package her longing into single-serve helpings, all just to make sure it could happen again tomorrow, and the next day, and every day after that. Six fucking years, Zayn thinks. That's how long she's been pretending. It's time, now: she's got to either tell Niall everything, or tell Niall half of it and give herself the chance to move on. If they got through Zayn going off to uni--if they got through Zayn saying Justin Bieber was shit--then they can get through... this. Whatever it ends up being.

She'll decide on the way.

"Can I go now?" Zayn says, a bag hanging from each of her wrists. "Please?"

Her mum waves her off. Waliyha rolls her eyes. Safaa presses her nose to the screen door, pulling on the handle so Zayn can't open it.

"Can I _go now_?" Zayn begs. 

"If you promise," Safaa says, "to bring Niall back."

Blimey, Zayn thinks. What is _with_ this family. Niall obsessed, every last one of them. "I'll try my best," she vows.

Safaa thinks this over, sucking on her teeth, then opens the door. Boris drools into one of the bags.

"See that you do," Safaa says sternly.

 

  
 

**+**

 

 

Zayn stares from the doorknob to the buzzer, her hand frozen between the two. She'd nearly sprinted over, likely leaving a trail of vegetables between her house and Niall's, and now she can't even get herself in the door.

"Is it locked?"

Zayn whirls round to find Niall's dad stood behind her, contemplating the door quite seriously.

"Niall's car is in the drive... she's probably got her music on, if she's not answering," he muses. "D'you think you can fit through the window in the loo?"

"Yes," Zayn says, because she's done it before.

"I was joking. I do have a key to me own house."

"Oh," Zayn says. "Well, I actually haven't tried it yet. The door, I mean."

Bobby gives her a funny look, then comes over and opens it. You don't have to be such a show-off, she thinks, watching him go easily in, lunchbox bouncing against his knee. "Coming?" he says. "Or did you just want to stand on our porch with a couple bags of cucumbers?"

"Oh, right. These are for you." Zayn transfers the bags from her wrists to Bobby's free hand, then hangs her hand off her ear--taking the back of an earring off, putting it back on, taking it off. Bobby watches this go on for a while. He clears his throat.

"Tell your mum to come into the shop this week, when she can," he says, and then, "I'll leave this thing open while you decide what to do with it."

"Alright. Thanks."

"Unless you want me to call Niall over?"

"Please don't," Zayn says hastily. Bobby gives her another funny look, then shrugs and heads for the kitchen, stepping out of his trainers along the way. Niall would kill him for that, she thinks. Shoes go in the plastic tub by the door. Or on the mat, but only if you're going to be putting them back on fairly soon.

Zayn sighs, looking back at the stagnant street. An eggplant's rolled down next to the Horans' postbox. She scrubs at her face, takes a deep breath, then goes inside, collecting Bobby's shoes and sticking them in the tub. She hesitates with her own, toeing them off slowly. They look wrong on the mat.

Carefully, she stacks them on top of Bobby's and puts the lid back on.

The door to Niall's room is half open when she gets there, enough that she can make out the pink bottoms of her feet at the end of the bed. Zayn's stomach twists. She flattens the rolled corners of the Derby poster hanging on the door. She draws invisible moustaches on 2011's starting back line. She counts to three twice, and then blindly pulls out a few chin hairs, and then counts to three again, and _then_ , with Bobby's footsteps closing in--she doesn't want him to think she's got some kind of complex--finally pushes the door open, steps in, and closes it behind her. Mainly so she can't just go right out again.

Niall's face down on the bed, right under that same Demi Lovato calendar from 2009, in that same ratty dressing gown she's had since Zayn's known her. Her hair's flung everywhere, wet and messy and tangled, incongruous with the careful order of the room.

 "I've had an unbelievably shit day, so please leave me alone, Da," she says, voice thick against her pillow. "Like, unless you've brought something delicious home."

Zayn takes a breath, and then another, but it's like there's a leak somewhere; she can't seem to keep any air in her lungs. "Not Bobby," she manages. "Same rules?"

"Oh." Niall rolls onto her side and sits up, shoving her hair out of her face. She smiles, bright, strained. "Hey, what's the craic?"

"Did you just say you had a shit day?" Zayn tries not to sound too offended, even though she is. Even though she'd probably say the same.

"No, no. Well." Niall pauses. "Yeah, sort of. But, like, not until after I left yours."

"An hour ago?"

"It's just that I felt our distance so acutely," she moans. "Every second of it." She falls flat on the bed, arms crossed Juliet style.

Waliyha echoes between Zayn's ears: _"Thought you weren't sixteen anymore!"_ And she's _not_ \--except that this town, this room, this person, they're like a bloody TARDIS, she thinks: Torture and Relative De-ageing in... Space. They force her right back into her bad habits, her obsessive pretending. A blink erases the last two days, and another sends her back six years: she's standing in her new mate's doorway, wondering whether she means the daft things she says and why her bare legs make Zayn's teeth ache and how to act like nothing inside her's changing.

"Why do you still have that fucking calendar up?" Zayn hears herself say.

Niall tips her head back to look at the wall behind her, even though she must know what's on it. Zayn certainly has it memorised. "Don't listen to her, Demi. She doesn't mean it." Niall reaches up and gives her a pat, then says to Zayn, "Dunno. I like it. You gave it to me."

"Well, it's useless. I'll get you a new one."

"It's not, though. The dates have been matching up all year."

"What?" Zayn laughs. "No, they haven't."

Niall climbs up so she's standing on her bed, bracing her hands on the wall at either side of the calendar. Zayn keeps her eyes up. She's pretty sure she'd be able to tell whether Niall's got pants on under that dressing gown, otherwise.

"Let's see... yesterday was the eighth, yeah? Look. Saturday," Niall says, pointing it out. "And then today's the ninth, and it's a--"

"Sunday?" Zayn says. She darts over and hoists herself up on the bed, reading it from over Niall's shoulder. "How's that even possible?"  

"I dunno, maths? It's not that big a deal. It happens all the time." 

"So for the past year," Zayn says, staring at her, "you've been keeping track of your schedule with your schedule from when we were sixteen?"

Niall shrugs. "Basically."

Fucking hell, Zayn thinks. And then she leans in to get a good look at the thing.

She never paid much attention to it, even when it was new, but now, up close, she sees that every few squares are filled with Niall's handwriting, loopy and too big. There is--there _was--_ a Derby game on the first, an orthodontia appointment on the fourteenth, loads of parties and shopping. And then there are the new additions, in green ink: another Derby game, her shifts at the music shop, Harry’s last day. Zayn shakes her head, baffled.

"Didn't I give you this for your birthday? Why's August filled out with old stuff? Did you, like, do it retroactively?"

"There's nothing wrong with being organised," Niall says defensively.

"Geek," Zayn tries, but it dies halfway out of her mouth. She's caught on a day at the end of the month, with _The Final Destination_ Sharpied in. It's got a heart instead of an o.

The others hadn't gone, Zayn remembers; it'd just been the two of them, camped out in the last row with a giant tub of popcorn and whatever they'd managed to sneak in: a bag of chocolates on Zayn's end, a handful of minibar whiskies on Niall's. Zayn can't remember a thing about the film, and she probably couldn't the day after she saw it, either. When she thinks about that night, she only thinks about the end of it, standing under Niall's porchlight, slapping at the bugs congregating round them and thinking up ways to keep Niall from going inside.

"You'll be thankful for my archival work, one day," Niall's saying, now, six years later. Zayn blinks back to the present. "This'll be in the Natural History Museum in a hundred years. Like, _A Year in the Life of a Rockstar before She Made It Bi_ \--"

"Why'd you put a heart in _The Final Destination_?" Zayn interrupts.

"What?" Niall says. "I didn't."

Zayn taps at the twenty-ninth, stomach upside down just from touching it. "You did."

Niall leans in to look. She's quiet for a bit, face blank. And then she starts laughing, sharp and loud and too close to Zayn's ear. "Oh, well," she says. "Guess I forgot about that."

"What?"

Niall falls back against the wall, not looking at Zayn. "I, erm. I might've thought that was a date."

Zayn stares at her. 

"Just for, like, a week," Niall says. " _If_ that."

"What?"

Around the thumbnail in her mouth, Niall says, "I did sort of ask you out."

Zayn keeps staring. Her ears are ringing. "No."

"Yes," Niall insists. 

"But you couldn't have. I'd've--" Zayn swallows. "I would have _noticed_. Right?"

"It's okay. It's not a big deal," Niall says, shrugging. Zayn wonders why she says that every time it is. "Can you imagine? Trying to date your new best friend? Your new _straight_ best friend? Christ, what a disaster. Thank fuck you didn't notice."

"A disaster," Zayn repeats faintly. Niall's straight best friend--she thinks about what Niall sees when she looks at her. She thinks about lingering on Niall's porch that night, shifting foot to foot, chest filling with helium every time Niall laughed. She hadn't understood it, then. She'd yet to give it a name, or assign it a hiding place. 

"In my defense, we _had_ only just met," says Niall. "I didn't know you very well, at that point."

"You still don't," Zayn wants to say. She wants to say it, and so for once, without thinking about why she shouldn't, she does. 

"Sorry," Niall says, laughing a bit incredulously, "but what the hell does that mean?"

"All this time, I've been--And you were--" Zayn clears her throat, starts over: "I was wrong, the other night, when I told you I wanted to be somebody else. I think, um... "

"What?" says Niall.

"I want to be me," Zayn tells her, finally. So few words, so momentous a fucking admission.

 ****"Alright," Niall says, watching Zayn carefully. "Who's that, then?"

Zayn opens her mouth. In the living room, Bobby turns the tele on, and the sound of it from Niall's bedroom is achingly familiar. It could be the muffled roar of a football crowd, or the white noise in Zayn's head when Niall grins at her, or the wind rushing through open windows while they're driving down the motorway. She closes her eyes, dizzy. All this time travel.

"Zayn?"

Maybe it's never going to end in an apocalypse, she thinks, blinking back to the calendar between them, Niall's guarded eyes. She's never going to end anything, or change the two of them irreparably--maybe she's just doing a reboot, getting things back to the way they always could've been if they'd just been honest. Maybe they can be, now. They can get it all right this time. 

"This is me," Zayn says. She holds Niall's face between her hands and kisses her sweetly, carefully, like she's always wanted in the room where she couldn't admit it.

"Oh," Niall breathes, after they've broken apart. Zayn keeps her hands on Niall's jaw. Niall keeps her eyes closed. Against her pinky, Zayn feels the racing of Niall's pulse, almost as quick as her own.

"I don't need a break from being myself." Zayn runs a trembling thumb over Niall's mouth. "I need a break from being other people."

Niall's eyes flutter open. "So that's--" She swallows. "That's how it is? Zayn and Niall?"

"If you want," Zayn says. She keeps her eyes open, this time. Niall smiles like a sunrise, then fists a hand in her top, pulls Zayn to her mouth, and snogs the ever-living fuck out of her.

It's so different from how it was in the Renault, Zayn thinks dazedly, pulling Niall as close as she can. That couldn't have been last night. It was miles, _years_ away from where they stand now. There's no fear it could end at any second, no uncertainty--nothing but the two of them, a distant crowd cheering them on, that ratty dressing gown Zayn never let herself think about untying. She kisses Niall, open mouthed, dirty, hands finding the haphazard knot at her waist. 

"Go on," Niall urges, grinning so big Zayn's got no choice but to lick her teeth. She laughs, delighted, and Zayn licks that in, too. "Want a peek under the bonnet?"

"No car metaphors," Zayn says. "Please." She brings her hands up just to take them back down again, fingers tracing along the open V of the robe: Niall's collarbones, the knobs of her ribs, the sweet swell of her tits. Zayn stops at the tie, heart throwing itself around madly. It's like she's back on Niall's front porch again. She wants in so bad, but she can't open the fucking door.

Niall kisses her. "Go on," she says again, gentler. "I want you to." She puts her hands over Zayn's and together, they undo the knot, and Zayn slides her palms over the hot skin of Niall's stomach, pushing the robe back until Niall yanks it all the way off, swings it round her head with a whoop, and tosses it onto a nearby lamp.

"Lunatic," Zayn says. She presses her forehead to Niall's, eyes closed, and listens to them laugh together. Niall's arse fucking naked and it still sounds exactly the same. 

Cunt throbbing, Zayn wraps her hands around Niall's rib cage. Her nipples are pink, smaller than Zayn's. She rubs over one with a thumb, then bends down to suck at it, Niall arching into her mouth, shoulders forced back into the wall.

"Zayn," she gasps. "Can we, um. Can we... not, ah, stand? I'm gonna fall over." 

"Mhmm," Zayn says, rubbing her lips over Niall's nipple, tracing the curve of her spine. She falls down to her knees, mouth smearing along Niall's stomach along the way. She never thought she'd get to do this--she's not going to stop touching Niall for a second. "Do what you gotta do, babe," she says, voice caught somewhere deep in her throat. She sucks at her navel, then the skin under it, then again, farther south, just above the uneven line of her pubic hair.

Niall's knees buckle. She sags into Zayn, dropping to the bed, taking the calendar down with her. It falls between the bed and the wall with a clatter. "Oops." She presses her tits into Zayn's, her pink face into Zayn's throat, hanging off Zayn's neck. "Now what are you gonna make me do?"

"Lie back," Zayn tells her, "so I can eat you out."

Niall laughs into Zayn's skin. "I literally can't believe you just said that."

"I know," Zayn says. "I'll literally do it, too. If you want."

"Um, yeah. I think so. Probably."

"Probably?" Zayn grins, giddy with it, at how being them is still just... being them. Them but better. Easier, with nothing to hide, no counting necessary when she touches Niall. She cradles the back of her skull and kisses her until she can't breathe.

"Most definitely," Niall corrects raggedly, who knows how long later.

Zayn gives her another quick kiss, then pushes her back onto her arse and pulls at her ankles, all in one move, until she's laid out flat.

"Jesus." She sounds stunned, staring up at the ceiling. Her chest rises as soon as it goes back down. "Have you, like--You've fucking done this before, Malik, haven't you?"

Zayn doesn't say anything, just pulls her shirt off over her head and settles in between Niall's legs. Her skin is soft, stubbled with hair, and Zayn drags her mouth over it, ankle to shin to knee, where she spends a bit of time meticulously kissing along the scar there, Niall pushing up on her elbows to watch, then continues on to the soft insides of her thighs. One of them is trembling, but she can't quite tell who as she sets her hands there, one on either side, to open Niall up.

"Gorgeous," Zayn mutters fervently, thumbs running along the glistening edges of her lips. Niall's hips shift restlessly.

"This is--" Zayn hears Niall swallow. "Is this, um, is this what they were teaching you at uni? What was your major again?"

Zayn presses her grin to Niall's cunt. 

"Oh, it's happening," she gasps, as Zayn sucks a kiss over her centre. "It's all happening."

Zayn runs her tongue along Niall's slit, closing her eyes at how good she tastes, curling her arms round the outsides of her thighs to bring her closer, to keep her from moving. Niall whimpers when she licks up to her clit. At the same time, the distant sound of a footy game switches to the news.

"Niall, babe," Zayn says, mouth still against her. "You gotta be quiet."

"Jesus Christ. Do you know how many times I imagined this?" Niall's fingers tangle in Zayn's hair as she laughs, jagged, breathless. "Like, exactly this, when I was 16?"

For a second, Zayn's not sure if she wants to laugh or cry. It feels like so much time wasted, every minute since they meant not spent like this: Zayn's mouth on Niall, Niall's legs thrown over her shoulders. She buries her face in Niall's cunt, trying to make up for lost time, squeezing her own legs together at the bit-off sounds Niall makes. She looks up Niall's body, her quivering stomach, her flushed tits, the hand fisted against her mouth, and shifts so she can unbutton her jeans and get a hand on herself, stroking two fingers down either side of her clit. She moans into Niall's skin.

"Fuck," Niall says, "you wanking over this?"

"Yeah," Zayn says. "This is, like, the hottest thing that's ever happened to me." They gasp at the same time, as Zayn rubs at her own clit and sucks at Niall's. Zayn thinks about watching Niall kiss Amy in Year 13, the first summer after uni, last winter hols. How she'd want to look away but couldn't. How she'd think about it at night, sometimes, cunt aching, and wouldn't let herself do anything about it. Not when she was in a sleeping bag on the floor of Niall's room, not when she was a hundred miles away in her studio apartment, not when she was in the shower three days ago, where the water could wash everything away. This is everything she's wanted and wouldn't let herself have.

"This is the hottest thing," Niall says, "that's happened to anyone. Ever. In all of histor--ah, _fuck me_."

Zayn laughs and presses the same two fingers she'd had up herself into Niall. Niall comes that way, biting at the inside of her wrist, curving up off the bed and into Zayn's mouth. She works her through it, tongue and lips and fingers, until Niall taps frantically at her forehead.

"Zayn," she says, voice hoarse. "Get naked. Come here."

Zayn undoes her bra and wriggles out of her bottoms, the whole of her skin like a live wire. Niall pulls at her waist and she goes clumsily, desperately, stretching out on top of her, and together they bring Zayn off. It's nothing like in the Renault. She can't think for how good it is, all these miles of bare skin, Niall's fingers tangled with her own and slipping over her clit.

"So, yeah," she murmurs afterwards, eyes heavy, skin buzzing. "I'm Zayn. It's good to meet you."

Niall grins. "Likewise," she says, and then, "Could go for a fag right about now, to be honest." 

Zayn fishes the packet from her jeans and gives them each a cigarette, and they take turns blowing smoke out the window while Zayn texts her mum that they're coming for lunch. It's like sixth form but better: they've only got tops on, and Niall sits straddled over Zayn's bare thighs, as close as she's ever been, grinning slow, sticky, leaning in mouth first.

"I love you," Zayn tells her, finally. She can't imagine why she'd ever wanted to be anyone else. 


End file.
